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= Paulien Hogeweg = From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Paulien Hogeweg (born 1943) is a Dutch theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher studying biological systems as dynamic information processing systems at many interconnected levels. In 1970, with Ben Hesper and she defined the term bioinformatics   as "the study of informatic processes in biotic systems".

Early life and Education [edit | edit source]
Born in Amsterdam, Netherland, Hogeweg graduated with a Masters degree from the University of Amsterdam in 1969. In her last year as Biology Masters Student, Hogeweg, published her studied on water plants titled Structure of aquatic vegetation: a comparison of aquatic vegetation in India, the Netherlands and Czechoslovakia. While volunteering at Leiden University, Hogeweg started her study as a Ph.D. student at Utrecht University. She publish seven articles based on her Ph.D work. She graduated from Utrecht University in 1976. The title of her thesis is "Topics in Biological Pattern Analysis " and addressed pattern formation and pattern recognition in biology.

Career[edit | edit source]
After graduating with a Masters in biology she went to volunteer at a Lab at Leiden University. It was when volunteering at Leiden University that she met Hesper and coined the term Bioinformatics, which she defines as:“the study of information processes in biotic systems.” In 1977,Hogeweg opened a research lab dedicated to bioinformatics with Ben Hesper. In 1990, Hogeweg published an important paper in the field of pre-biotic study: Spiral wave structure in pre-biotic evolution hypercycle stable against parasites. in 1991, Hogeweg became a full professor of Theoretical Biology at Utrecht University(UU). Since 2008, Hogeweg has been an Honorary professor at UU. Hogeweg has participated as an editor board member for Journal Theoretical Biology, Bulletin Mathematical Biology, Biosystems, Artificial Life Journal, and Ecological Informatics.

Research[edit | edit source]
Starting with asynchronous extensions of L-systems she pioneered agent-based modeling studying development of social structure in animal societies, using the opportunity based "ToDo" principle where agents "do what there is to do", and a "DoDom" principle for dominance ranking, also known as the winner-loser effect. This type of research later became popular in artificial life.

When the first biological sequence data became available (from the EMBL) she developed a tree based algorithm for multiple sequence alignment. which is now common practice in sequence alignment and phylogeny. At about the same time she pioneered folding algorithms for predicting RNA secondary structures. RNA folding was also introduced to allow for a non-linear genotype to phenotype mapping to study evolution on complex fitness landscapes .

The first phase-phase trajectory of a chaotic attractor in an ecological food-chain model of three differential equations appeared long before chaos became popular. She pioneered the use of cellular automata for studying spatial ecological and evolutionary processes and demonstrated that spatial pattern formation can revert evolutionary selection pressures.

Extending the Cellular Potts model (CPM) to study morphogenesis and development she modeled the complete life cycle of Dictyostelium discoideum using simple rules for chemotaxis and differential adhesion. This CPM approach is now used for modeling in various areas of developmental biology, and the migration of immune cells in lymphoid tissues. Finally the CPM is used for EvoDevo research.

In recent years, Hogeweg has continued to researcher on co-evolutionary dynamics and morphogenesis to expand on “adaptive genomics” to study the interface between gene regulation and evolution in cellular organisms. Also, her research is also focused on evaluability at the level of genome organization and regulatory networks, and has shown RNA increase in complexity as the result of  interactions of secondary structure and spatial pattern formation.

Collaborations
Hogeweg has participated diverse set of research in biological science. Her contribution varies from developing computational methods such as algorithm for tree based multiple sequence alignment which has become a standard practice. Most importantly, her work has contributed to bioinformatics theory.

External links[edit | edit source]

 * Paulien Hogeweg: Homepage
 * Theoretical Biology and Bioinformatics Group, Utrecht University